Not Bad out of the Box !

[ScatterGunner]

just shot the 17 sportster out of the box (returned for repairs) after a good cleaning. from the bench, it gave me 2.5" groups at 100 yards using 17gr  hornady varmint express vmax bullets. now i need to tweak it.

check out the gallery photo.

sg[/url]

[quickdtoo]

You've been shootin too many shotguns, for a hmr, that's not a group, but a pattern!    Try some different ammo, that's way worse than to be expected. THE worse groups I've got out of my marlins or CZ have been 1.5moa, now after break in are shootin .6-.75moa. Lest you have one of the "longcruise guns", it will get much better. When I first went to the range, I took all 5 offerings in 17gr ammo with me, there was a big difference in how they shot and not only that, as the barrel "seasons", the choice of ammo that it shoots best will more than likely change so don't give any of your ammo away unitl you have a 5-6 boxes of ammo thru it. To speed up the break in process, the old bore polish will help, worked well with all my hmrs. Have fun,    Tim

[ScatterGunner]

haha !      :-D

ok, i tightend the "pattern" up to about an inch by putting a heel on the butt of the stock that rested on the table instead of resting the stock on a bag of shot.

however mild the recoil on this rifle is, it looks like the minor shifts in where the stock ended up on the bag made a difference.

i'm getting there !

sg

[quickdtoo]

I suppose you already know this, but just in case, the NEFs shoot best from the bench if you position the forward bag/rest just ahead of or at the hinge spacer which is at the rear of the forend, the idea being to put as little pressure as possible on the barrel stud. Of course there's the "O" ring trick on the stud between barrel and forend. This helps sometimes, but not always. Ice used a rubber grommet on his sportster, said it worked better than the "O" ring. His post is down the page.  hth,  Tim